My Most Precious Thing
by Astell Epaz
Summary: To pass his senior grade, Rukawa was to write an essay about his most precious thing. The problem is, he couldn't write more than 3 words. The solution: Sleeping. R&R please!


**AN: I didn't retake Star7's challange, but I'll try my best to write with heart in this fic (because writing in first person's view is harder that I thought). Please enjoy this childish fantasy piece!**

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Rukawa tapped the pen onto his sheet of blank paper drowsily, eyes closed already. His head would dropped onto the table hadn't his left hand supported it. Nothing, not even a final exam could keep him awake in class.

The clock's short hand pointed at nine and the longer one in between twelve and one. The test had started only several minutes ago, and while everyone was intensely scribbling their ideas onto the paper, Rukawa was busy making his way to dream land.

'Write down not more than 1500 words about your most precious thing' the question had said. He knew well what to answer, but he couldn't evolve it into a composition. An essay consisted of 'My most precious thing is basketball.' won't give him a pass to the university now, will it?

The long hand stroke the first number was accompanied with a soft thud. Immediately both the supervisors and the participants turned their head to the source, a drooling Rukawa on his sheet of paper. It annoyed the supervisors who came to his side and tried to take his paper as a punishment, but it wouldn't budge.

"Don't wake him up, sir." A nerd male student beside him advised.

"Or what?"

"You will get a free trip to the hospital." Then he turned back to scribbling on his half full paper.

The supervisors stared at each other, unable to decide which to trust, the nerd or their guts. As they discussed their way out by staring, Rukawa was brought to a journey in his dream.

xxx

"Not good enough! Your arms are too straight! You use too much power!" A slight fluffy male voice echoed. Rukawa's visibility was still clouded with darkness. He soon knew why.

He opened his eyes, and was greeted by the sight of a child practicing his basketball skills in a public court. The place was slightly similar to the one close to his home, only this one had more green trees. The sun was high upon the sky; its light beamed to the pale kid's skin, making it looked almost as white as a ghost.

On the child's hand was a green ball, which he threw enthusiastically to the rim. The ball spun as it made its way to the rim and Rukawa could see a black pointy sunglass was glued to one side. And it smirked at him.

"Auch!"

The same voice as the first squealed in pain, and Rukawa figured it came from the ball that hit the outer rim since the kid was perfectly standing on the spot, catching his breath. Rukawa closed his eyes. One, two, three…

He opened them. The field was empty.

_Where did they go?_

"Remember me, Rukawa-kun?"

Rukawa slightly jolted in surprise at the greeting. He turned to his right, and saw the small kid shoving the green ball very close to his chest. The ball still wore a sunglass and had a mouth below it.

He stared at it like it was an alien. Well, actually it was.

"What are you?" Rukawa asked.

"Geez…" The green ball's smile turned into a cure pout. "9 years have passed and you have completely forgotten about me? What a disgrace! Who do you think teach you basketball?" It protested like a 5 years old child, and was greeted by an awkward silence.

The ball turned into shades of red not out of shame, but something hotter than that. "Tell him, young Rukawa!" It suddenly bounced by itself and turned its back to him. The child was surprised at first, but then regained his composure back.

"You haven't play with Mido-kun for nine years since you couldn't hear it anymore." Young Rukawa explained.

"Mido-kun?"

"Mido-kun came from its color, _Midori_. It gave its name to you since you wouldn't name it at all."

Rukawa scratched his head, bewildered with the information. Deep inside he knew it wasn't a lie, but he couldn't remember _anything_ about the green ball, so he couldn't trust it either.

"Remember this, Rukawa." Mido-kun suddenly said. Rukawa's eyes snapped open at the words he perfectly recognized. "I don't only belong to you. I belong to everyone who plays basketball, even if the ball they use has different colors."

A vision about Rukawa's younger self and a green ball was visible in his eyes. Right on the same spot, he was himself crying over the green ball who was frowning. The ball said the same thing to his younger self, causing him to cry harder. He hugged the ball, not wanting to let go of his possessive.

Rukawa shivered at the scene. He didn't remember the last time he had cried that much. The previous had been when both of his parents died in an accident and he was brought to his grampa's house, even that was not until the limit of screaming his lungs out. He couldn't hear it, but his younger self was clearly screaming from his movements.

Between him and the scene was the tall net, the one used to prevent the ball from running to the street. Rukawa never minded that before, but right then, he wanted to tear it so that he could run towards them, asking for clarification.

'_What had happened when I was 7?'_

"Oi Rukawa-kun, wake up!"

Rukawa snapped from his trance. He blinked, and the vision was gone. The field was empty once again, and its previous inhabitants were outside along with him. It took several seconds for Rukawa to realize that the vision had been a fake, and the fact made him wanted to tear his hair out his scalp.

"Explain everything to me!" He demanded in cold tone, raising it so slightly at the last word.

"Well you are-"

"Let me handle this." Mido-kun interrupted. Rukawa had a slight urge to toss the ball for interrupting him, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. He just waited there, standing and staring at the sunglass it was wearing, waiting for the answer.

"You met me when you was 5, traumatized with your parents incident and closed yourself to the world. I forced you to spend time with me, forcing you to develop a hobby, and it worked." It paused. Rukawa couldn't see whether it was sad, angry, or annoyed from the sunglass, but he assumed it was the first one.

"You started to love basketball more than everything. You would spend your after school to train with me, just like the first scene that you saw when you came here. You became your school ace one year after our encounter."

Every word it said formed an illustration in his head. His memories jumped out from the shadowy corner. Everything started to make sense. Even he could predict the next thing it was going to say, the climax of the story,

_Farewell_.

"From all children that I have ever met, you matured the quickest." It commented, although it supposed to be praising, but it felt as a disappointment remark to Rukawa. "I am only visible and audible to those who believe me as a friend of loneliness. But for you, I am as your basketball teacher. With such thoughts I could no longer exist alongside you."

Rukawa's eyes widened at the truth. Mido-kun seemed to have a hard time in saying the next sentence for it stayed silent longer than before. Young Rukawa shut his eyes bitterly.

"And this is the day, place, and time of our farewell. I-you have seen the rest, right?"

An impossible tear slid from its black sunglass while biting its lower lip. Young Rukawa was turning his face away from his older self, and Rukawa had tears wet his cheeks.

Rukawa was crying.

The atmosphere around turned uncomfortably cold, yet warm at the same time. The warm feeling of long-time encounter and farewell mixed into an unpleasant mixture. Hesitation hung in the air, stuck in everyone's throat, until pecks of black dots suddenly appeared around them, blocking Rukawa's vision slowly.

"So this is our real farewell," Young Rukawa was finally brave enough to face his older self with watery eyes. With his small hands, he wiped them off, only for reappeared again. Again, Rukawa's heart ached.

"We'll meet again at your university game, Rukawa-kun, along with the best teammates that you ever had."

The black spots had clouded eighty percent of his visions. He pulled his eye lids to open his eyes wider, but the black spots stayed the same. Frustrated, he shut them tight instead.

"Do'aho"

"I'll give you a new word to remember: Every basketball in the universe is me, and we belong to everyone who enjoys basketball…" Mido-kun's voice faded by each word. Once again, Rukawa found his eyes wet.

"Now go back and finish your essay!"

xxx

"55 minutes left!"

The warning rang in Rukawa's ear as he slowly regained his consciousness. Usually he would hit those who had wakened him up, but at that moment, all he wanted to do was scrubbing his eyes that seemed to have something wedging.

"What the?" He exclaimed as he felt something cold on his hand.

He stared at the hand that he used to scrub his eyes curiously. It was now wet. Surprised, he caressed his cheek, and he could feel a trail of frozen tears.

'_I'm crying?'_

"Enjoy your sleep, Mr. Kaede?"

Rukawa looked up and was greeted by a very annoyed supervisor. The other one was nowhere to be seen. Rukawa replied him with a shrug.

The supervisor looked at Rukawa's paper, and directly changed his plan. "I'm thinking of disqualifying you of the test, but apparently you have written something on the paper with your _drools_. I'll take your little nap as an early boredom act." Chuckling and giggling filled the classroom, though it soon resided with a glare form the supervisor.

Rukawa ignored them and turned to his essay.

'_We'll meet again at your university game, Rukawa-kun…'_ Mido-kun had said. That means, he had to pass his test to do so.

'What should I write?' Rukawa pondered as he tapped his pen on the blank paper. He scanned his classmates. Most of them were either editing their work or did what he had just done, sleeping.

'Ah!'

An unbelievable event happened. Rukawa just had a brainstorm.

Yes, you heard that right, a brainstorm.

He finished just in time with the handwriting similar to a chicken's. Without any editing, he gave the sheet to the surprised supervisor before he plopped his head on his crossed arms and drove to the dream land once again, hoping to meet them once more.

'_I haven't said goodbye yet…' _

While Rukawa went to complete his quest and his classmates bewildered at him, the supervisor couldn't keep his jaw from falling at Rukawa's work. Here's what he had written,

_**The most precious thing to me is sleeping, because I can meet something that I can no longer meet. I had just did it, and I meet a friend of mine and my younger self, who brought my memories back and forced me into writing this. That friend's name is Mido-kun, a friend who had taught me how to play basketball.**_

_**Playing with it had caused my way of playing to be selfish. And my loss of memory at his last word caused me to maintain such way. It had changed in the last two years in Shohoku, but still far from Sendoh's.**_

'_**I don't only belong to you. I belong to everyone who plays basketball; even if the ball they use has different colors' was his words. Had I remembered it, perhaps I have surpassed my rival right now. But instead of the stupid green ball, the stupid red head, the stupid spikey, and the stupid sannoh's ace knocked that idea into me forcefully.**_

_**Mido-kun, basketball, and my teammates are precious to me. I don't want to lose them. But the thing deserved to be the first is my dream, the seed of imagination that brought my encounter with Mido-kun that only lasted in two years. And dream is brought by sleeping, an act that restores your energy and thus become the base in playing basketball.**_

_**And most of all, sleeping helps me to talk my feelings out, in exchange of socializing.**_

_**Rukawa Kaede**_

The supervisor scratched his head, confused. "Not even close to 500 words, but not being wordy at the same time. He slept in class, but he admitted it here. And he is describing a talking 'something'. How much should I give him for this?"

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**AN: Done! I hope Rukawa's feelings get to you without making him extremely OOC. Speaking of which, I have an idea in store for a continuous story. Should I do it, or should I finish the previous two stories first?**


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